help - keep losing my temper all sense of perspective with ds!

[labebete]

he's only 3.5 and mostly lovely but he will not do anything I say ever, ever, ever. His baby sister isn;t sleeping so I am tired and irritable and I know half the time I should leave it but where do you draw the line? And how do you keep calm?

He ended up on the naughty step yesterday because he licked a (filthy) window and after five times of asking he wouldn't stop - and his sister started copying. So then when he got on the naughty step he 'spat' (not really, more like raspberries) at me and said yucky mummy and was just really unphased at being told off - which is how he always is! So I ended up shouting at him - which I feel terrible about. What would you have done?

Three year olds are vile, I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Think about picking your battles - did it REALLY matter that he was licking a window?

Ignore/distract/divert, a lot of the behaviour is about getting attention, and he has learned that in order to get your full, undivided attention he needs to be 'bad'.

Ratchet down the volume - you would be surprised at how tense shouting can make one.

Catch him being good - praise praise praise, turning the focus from negative to positive.

HTH, and good luck.

I praise soooo much when he's good! I really try to give him all the attention for good behaviour.

Would you have let that one go? I really feel like I need someone on my shoulder picking my battles for me at the moment! Brain so fogged.

If I really did not want him to lick the window (well, no, I probably wouldn't have wanted him to), I'd have lifted him away after the first request was ignored and made him play somewhere where there were no windows to be licked. I certainly would not ask as many times as 5- 3 would be max.

I would be ok with him beding angry, probably to the point of yucky mummy (after all, I say worse when angry with dh!), but would concentrate on making sure he didn't get at the window.

Don't pay any attention to his moans and insults when he's sat on the step.
As long as he's safe and he's sat there for three minutes, ignore him.

had to keep asking because I couldn't get to him quickly enough to move him away, sadly. Really feel like he's getting the brunt of things at the moment

also, he's not even angry about being on the naughty step, just sort of not bothered!

another prob, HC, is that he doesn't tend to sit there, just wanders off so I spend ages putting him back on (which is when I start wondering whether I should have just left it in the first place)